DragStuff

Wells guys, it's here, Hurricane Sandy is at our front door, here on the East Coast and it's not looking pretty.

We're been getting rain since last night but the worse has yet to come and now they are saying up to 85mph winds.

The ground is very wet and with the leaves still green, it's not going to take much to blow over tress causing power outages.

They are saying possibly up to a week without electric if we loose it, so we're screwed if we lose it. I've been seeing tree cutting companies all over the place, getting ready. PPL has cancelled all vacations and is calling in help from all over.

I have never thought I'd need a generator but it's looking more and more like I will but the big issue is now, the parts to connect to your breaker box, they are out of so it doesn't matter if you go out and rent one or not!

Anyone want a family of four and a dog for a week?

Bruce

Hope you guys weather the storm out ok Bruce, looks like the east coast is in for a heck of a ride.

You don't HAVE to hook up to the breaker box, you can just run an extension cord in to whatever you need to run for a while. Is your house all electric or ?

When we have a power outage I typically just run the heater blower motor, since it's gas it doesn't take to much to just run the blower. Our hot water heater is gas, so we don't have to worry about that. One thing about natural gas, we've never had an outage.

Might end up taking a half day and heading home before it getting really crazy.

My house is total electric so if we go out, we're out.

Anyone want to school me on generators?

Any want to give me directions to Kansas?

Don't know how cold it's gonna get, but you could probably run a small electric heater off one, that would at least keep one room warmed up a bit. Put the generator outside, wouldn't hurt to get a chain and a padlock to tie it down. I imagine if you don't it'll be gone in the morning. I would be surprised if there are any generators available at this point. When we have ice storms they sell like hotcakes.

Your right, I think you have a better chance in finding milk, water and bread on the shelves than you do a generator.

Lowes, Home Depot and any place that sells them are out and also sump pumps.

There will be a bunch for sale after the storm, good time to pick one up for the next time around.

Get a big on e if you get one. Any generator you can carry will be hard pressed to run everything at once. We lost power during Katrina and I ran the satellite and tv, along with some fans on mine and made out pretty well. I could run the fridge and the freezer, as well, but I had to alternate due to too much load on the small generator I had. If we needed the microwave for anything, I had to unhook everything else...

I was told a 5500 watts generator should be big enough.

Man the winds really picked up and boy you can feel the temperature dropping.

Anything is better than nothing, but yeah a 5000+ one would be a good idea. I think that's about the price break area from being affordable to expensive. Big gas tank is a plus so you can run it through the night.

Bruce something else you might be able to do is to get a couple car batteries and get a 12volt to 110AC Inverter, not sure if you can find one of those now or not, but that might get you by with some light, charge phones, etc. for a while. You could recharge the batteries using jumper cables and your car or truck.

Didn't think about that, I got my Optima battery and maybe I should charge that up just in case and check into a inverter.

The worse is coming at 2:00 and I'm heading home at 2:30, should be a fun ride home. It normally takes 10 minutes to get here, I bet it will be more like 30-35 minutes and I just hope there are no wrecks on the way.

Hey Bruce did you make it home ok? I hope all is well for all you guys up there riding this thing out. Make sure and keep us posted! Next time something like this happens ai can clear out extra space in the shop for the camaro. I'll even let you sing and dance around my fire pit like Apache Racing does when he comes over! Seriously though, stay safe!

Be safe Brother. It looked like Sandy was hitting Pennsylvania pretty hard.

Hey guys,
What a night but we made it out ok.
We still got power Woohoo.....
The yard looks like a battle zone but luckily
my trees are all standing.
Hey Hitch, can we make smores too?
Mikey, time for you to come help your little
bro clean up the yard....

Bruce69Camaro wrote:Hey guys,
What a night but we made it out ok.
We still got power Woohoo.....
The yard looks like a battle zone but luckily
my trees are all standing.
Hey Hitch, can we make smores too?
Mikey, time for you to come help your little
bro clean up the yard....

Glad to hear you're still up and running. Sometimes we take things like 'lectricity for granted.

I can give you pretty detailed instructions on how to build a drainage system. First, you need a shovel.........